Researchers with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Cornell
University have developed new techniques for boosting the amount of iron
infants absorb from solid food. The team processed freeze-dried samples of
chicken liver and beef in a blender, which reduced the meat to small, uniform
particles. They found that these particleswhich become distributed evenly
throughout cereals because of their size and consistencycan serve as a
source of supplementary iron for infants. In addition, in vitro tests
indicated that iron uptake from cereal supplemented with the beef particles was
greater when blending time was increased. This research can help address iron
deficiency-induced anemia, a problem that affects as much as one-third of the
global population.

A study at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Children's Nutrition
Research Center in Houston, Texas, has shown that many preschoolers exceed
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendations that the children spend no
more than two hours a day watching television and using the computer. The
researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
that surveyed a diverse group of more than 1,800 preschoolers, ages 2-5,
concerning their media consumption or screen time, measured as TV/video viewing
or computer use. The researchers compared children watching more than two hours
of TV/videos to those watching two hours or less, and computer users to
nonusers, relative to various selected health outcomes related to obesity.
Results showed that 30.8 percent of the preschoolers studied exceeded the AAP
guidelines with TV viewing time alone, not including computer time. Those
children who surpassed the AAP recommendations on TV/video viewing were more
likely to be overweight or at risk for being overweight.

A new standardized profiling method for distinguishing even slight
variations in the types and amounts of phenolic compounds in foods has been
developed by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) chemists James Harnly and
Long-Ze Lin. Discerning potentially beneficial food components is important for
conducting clinical nutrition studies and for developing dietary guidance.
Using the new method, Harnly and Lin have identified nearly 60 phenolic
components in Ginkgo biloba leaves, including many that had never before been
detected in the popular herb. They also used the unique profiling method to
differentiate phenolics in more than 360 other foods, such as Mexican oregano,
Fuji apple peel, soybean seed, broccoli, dry beans, tea and coffee.

Scientists funded by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have reported
on how the elderly who also engage in physical activity improve their quality
of life. In a recent study involving a group of 213 volunteers aged 70 to 89
years, the better the participants' adherence to a physical activity program,
the greater their improvements in physical functioning. Those who improved the
most reported exercising 150 minutes or more per week. The study was published
in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

Based on a close look at the everyday eating habits of a large group of men
and women, researchers supported by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
have found that people whose diets were most similar to the 2005 Dietary
Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) were least likely to have metabolic syndrome.
For the study, metabolic syndrome was defined as a condition occurring among
people who have at least three of the following health risks: abdominal
obesity, poor blood sugar control, high blood fats, low levels of HDL
"good" cholesterol, and high blood pressure. A cause-and-effect
relationship could not be shown between a healthier diet and lower prevalence
of metabolic syndrome in this study, according to authors. But among the diet
and health indicators of the more than 3,000 participants studied, the
researchers found that those individuals with metabolic syndrome tended to
consume a diet that was less consistent with the 2005 DGAs.

The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans includedfor the first
timerecommendations that U.S. consumers keep their intake of trans fatty
acids as low as possible. Landmark research conducted by Agricultural Research
Service (ARS) scientists at the agency's Beltsville Human Nutrition Research
Center in Beltsville, Md., contributed to that conclusion. In the ARS study, 58
adult volunteers were fed four different controlled diets, described as
moderately high trans fat, high trans fat, high saturated fat, and high
"heart-healthy" oleic acid. The study showed that after the
volunteers consumed any of the trans-fat or saturated-fat diets, as opposed to
the oleic acid diet, their LDL cholesterol levels were significantly increased.

Antioxidant capacity of volunteers' blood plasma samples declined after
eating a test meal that lacked antioxidants, according to Agricultural Research
Service (ARS) scientists. But the scientists also found, for the first time,
that consuming grapes with that same test meal prevented the decline in plasma
antioxidant capacity of the volunteers during the first two hours following the
test mealthe time digestion is the most rapid. The experiments were part
of a larger study that compared the ability of the human body to use the
antioxidants in Bing cherries, dried plums, dried plum juice, kiwifruit, red
grapes, strawberries and wild blueberries. Scientists used an ARS-developed
method called ORAC, short for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, to evaluate
the fruits' antioxidant capacity. They documented their findings in 2007 in the
Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

Scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Richard B. Russell
Research Center in Athens, Ga., recently compared the two primary industry
methods of chilling poultry carcasses in terms of meat quality, food safety and
water management. Chilling is an important step in processing poultry before
marketing of the birds. Immersion chillingin which chicken carcasses are
submerged in tanks of cold water or an ice-and-water mixis the
predominant method now used in the United States. Dry-air chilling blasts
carcasses with cold air, while evaporative-air chilling combines cold air
blasts with water misting. Both immersion chilling and air chilling met
criteria for limiting bacterial pathogen growth on carcasses. But tender
chicken is also very important to consumers. Research showed that air chilling
led to better quality of breast fillets and provided higher cooked-meat yields
than immersion chilling. Processors could also save about 4.5 billion gallons
of water per year if all 9 billion birds processed annually in the United
States were air-chilled.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant breeders in Salinas, Calif., have
developed an experimental technique to boost iceberg's nutritional value.
Scientists in the agency's Crop Improvement and Protection Research Unit pried
open the leaves of iceberg lettuces as they grew, preventing the formation of
tightly closed heads. With more surface exposed to sunlight, the lettuces
accumulated twice as much iron and calcium and five times as much vitamin C as
typical iceberg lettuce. Scientists in the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit in
Madison, Wis., helped raise beta-carotene levels in carrots, and are now
working to produce the same results in cucumbers and melons. The same
researchers are also using classical breeding methods to raise levels of
heart-healthy compounds in onions and garlic.

Collard, a cole crop related to broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower, has
always been a local staple in the South. But its commercial cultivation
expanded dramatically in the 20th century, and is now dominated by a few hybrid
varieties. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant geneticist Mark Farnham
led a team to look for unique collard varieties in the Carolina coastal plains.
The researchers wanted to find and preserve "heirloom" collards,
local varieties of the leafy vegetable that had been cultivated from seeds
passed down through generations. They collected 87 distinctive collard seed
samples from these small gardensvarieties that might otherwise have
disappeared in the near future.